


Sky Full of Holes

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Cemetery, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:32:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on tumblr: Nijimura meets a strange man in a cemetery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sky Full of Holes

**Author's Note:**

> for tumblr user lacett, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Title comes from Fountains of Wayne's song "Cemetery Guns" although it has little to do with the plot. Prompt can be found in this list: http://stephanericherthanyou.tumblr.com/post/114129135559/

It’s a while before Shuuzou notices the man sitting under the tree, watching him from under his overly-long bangs. The thing is, Shuuzou’s not looking for him, or for anyone--why should he? He’s been alone every week since he started coming for, absent the week of his father’s birthday and deathday and a few other scattered occasions when the rest of his family comes, too. But approximately 45 weeks a year, he’s here on Thursday half an hour after work ends with a bouquet in his hands. Every week, he spends half an hour here sending his thoughts out into what is most likely nothing, but even so he feels just a little bit closer to his father. Even if it’s only for his own benefit, that’s worth something (or it should be).

Today, though, he turns his face to the wind and catches sight of movement, a pale fluttering like a butterfly--only it’s human fingers, attached to a human body. The person meets Shuuzou’s eyes, but seems just the slightest bit taken aback when Shuuzou continues to stare.

“Look,” says Shuuzou. “Uh, not to be rude or anything but I come to this grave in this cemetery at this time on this day every week, and I just want an hour to do it, if you don’t mind. I’ve been doing this for years, alone, and I’d like for it to stay that way.”

The person blinks. “Are you talking to me?”

“There’s no one else here, is there?”

“No, I suppose not.” He smiles, wry and tight and at that moment it sinks into Shuuzou’s head like a splinter from an unfinished floorboard when he twists his foot precisely the wrong way that this man is quite pretty.

And then he gets to his feet; his motions are strange and jerky, and when he does stand it looks as if he’s hovering a few inches off the ground. Shuuzou squints; he floats back down.

“You know, this had better not be your idea of a joke,” says Shuuzou. “It’s really not funny.”

He steps closer; maybe there’s a harness in the tree or something. That would be a sick, fucked-up joke, playing ghost in the cemetery and trying to scare a guy who’s just there to honor his father’s memory, but people are dicks sometimes. Actually, a lot of the time. Shuuzou steps closer; the guy doesn’t move.

“You can try and touch me,” he says. “It won’t work.”

Shuuzou reaches out. The palm of his hand passes through what looks like a shoulder. He feels nothing, not the heat of light or any kind of the coldness that people on shitty late-night television claim to feel. His hand isn’t bathed in any sort of projection; there’s no harness in the tree. It’s too detailed to be a trick of the light. Shuuzou lowers his hand, still looking suspiciously into the ghost’s placid face.

“Isn’t it, you know, creepy? Spying on people like this?”

The ghost (for lack of a better word or proof otherwise) laughs, short and dark; it’s like being caught in the shadow of a low-flying airplane. “Everyone else looks straight through me.”

“I’m sorry,” says Shuuzou, after a moment. “But…”

“Right,” says the ghost, and he flashes Shuuzou a two-finger salute before fading back through the trees.

* * *

Throughout the following week, Shuuzou finds himself constantly thinking about the ghost in the graveyard, the pale fingers and the movements, imitative of humanity but not quite there. That face, beautiful and blank like a false wall hiding something--everything--behind it, and the timbre of his voice, dance through Shuuzou’s daydreams like tipsy, out-of-place party guests through the neighbors’ garden, and Shuuzou is helpless to stop them from holding him captive. One of his coworkers notes that he’s even more spacey than usual, that something seems to be distracting him--not bothering him per se, but distracting him, and he resolves to put it out of his head after the next visit.

But will the ghost be there? Had he imagined the whole thing? Is he still in some sort of deep dream, and will he wake up slumped over his father’s grave, with nothing under the tree behind him but air? Will the ghost have settled things, moved on to haunt someone else? Did the ghost decide that his dismissal was a forever thing? Shuuzou had wanted to be alone with his memories at the time the ghost appeared, but after a grueling week like this he wouldn’t exactly mind a pretty face, even if he can’t touch it (although he tells himself to stop thinking these thoughts about a dead man).

The ghost is not there when he arrives , placing the bouquet of daffodils and lilies in front of the headstone, kneeling and bowing his head. He tells his father about work, about his mother and his younger siblings, his brother’s application to the naval academy and his sister’s double-double in her last basketball match, about the things he’s seen that his father might find interesting, about how much they all miss him, about how much he hopes that his father’s spirit is at rest.

When he’s said his piece, he looks up. The ghost is back; he nods his head toward Shuuzou and Shuuzou smiles.

“Was last week the first time you saw me?”

The ghost shakes his head. “I saw you twice before that. You’re remarkably on-schedule, you know. And after the first two times, I thought I’d wait to see if you’d show up at the same time again, and you did.”

“My father deserves at least that,” Shuuzou says.

“He’s lucky to have a son like you, then,” says the ghost--and even though there’s no reason to trust him, even though Shuuzou’s been hearing things like this from distant relatives and family friends for years, it hits him in the gut like a sucker punch from someone he’d thought he’d knocked out.

Shuuzou bites his lip; he’s not going to cry right here and now, damn it. The ghost’s pale fingers reach out; he lowers them gingerly to Shuuzou’s shoulder, an approximation of where Shuuzou’s shirt begins and the open air ends. Shuuzou can’t feel it, but he appreciates the gesture all the same.

“Thank you,” he says; his voice cracks.

The ghost says nothing, but does not remove his hand. The wind rustles the trees, blowing Shuuzou’s hair back out of his face but not affecting his companion’s.

“So you’ve only seen me the past four weeks?” Shuuzou says, almost biting his tongue and definitely cringing after the words escape him.

“It’s how long I’ve been dead, yes,” says the ghost, but he’s smiling. “It’s fine; you’re curious. You can see my grave if you want to.”

“Uh,” says Shuuzou. “Sure.”

The ghost leads him silently through the rows of headstones; they pass no others on their way. The one they stop at is shiny, new-looking, with a few half-wilted flowers in front. It reads a name in the Latin Alphabet, followed by kanji underneath, and two days--one a few months after Shuuzou’s own date of birth, the second about a month ago. There is no inscription. Shuuzou swallows.

“I was in a road accident. Jacked a motorcycle for a weekend joyride, went out on the highway and into the blindspot of a truck. I didn’t know he was changing lanes until the wheel was a few inches from my face.”

“Shit,” says Shuuzou. “I’m sorry. Tatsuya. That’s…”

“Well, I’m still here, sort of,” Tatsuya says, lips twisting into that same smile that Shuuzou is rapidly becoming attached to.

* * *

The next week, Shuuzou brings flowers for Tatsuya, daisies and tulips and roses all mixed together in different hues. He and Tatsuya walk to the grave together, chatting about motorcycle models and the weather, and when they reach it Shuuzou holds out the bouquet.

“I’d hand it to you, but…”

Tatsuya’s face softens. “Thank you,” he whispers, and it’s Shuuzou’s turn to wish he could lend a physical hand of comfort and reassurance.

* * *

“Do you think my father hears me?” Shuuzou asks one week.

They usually don’t speak of life and death matters; Shuuzou doesn’t know how to phrase it and he gets the feeling Tatsuya’s a little bit uncomfortable about some details, so he doesn’t push. But this has been buzzing around in the back of his mind like a mosquito flying just out of reach.

Tatsuya shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s beyond this any more than you do. He could be a ghost, tethered to some other place, or he could simply not be. Or something else.”

And it’s unspoken that Tatsuya doesn’t know if or when he’ll stop existing, too, or ascend to another plane or whatever Shuuzou’s father has done. It’s not much of a comfort, but it’s not discouraging, either.

* * *

One week, Tatsuya doesn’t show up. He’s not at Shuuzou’s father’s grave or his own, and Shuuzou waits an extra fifteen minutes but he doesn’t show up. An air of uneasiness settles in over Shuuzou the following week, coupled with a feeling that time is running all too slowly. The next week Tatsuya isn’t there either, and it’s then Shuuzou begins to think about how much he’s taken that pretty face and the easy conversation for granted, how much he’d looked forward to seeing Tatsuya even during his months-long funks, and how seeing that smile, even when half-full, had stirred something deep inside him. Leave it to him to fall in love with a dead man, one who would eventually drop out of the world at random.

* * *

Tatsuya never reappears, but Shuuzou still brings flowers to his grave every week and bows before it. Sometimes he imagines a flick of fingers that turns out to be a simple cabbage butterfly; sometimes he hears laughter in the wind that’s just oddly-carried sound from far away. His longing eventually subsides, but his memories do not.


End file.
